Chosen in Death
by Tevlek
Summary: Trying to glimpse into Jack's past shortly before his death but before we go back, let's see a little peek at the present. Unoriginal, I know. xD


**((No one reads these but I thought I would post this anyway. Jack has been cooped up in North's workshop since they took off from Burgess after defeating Pitch and the little sprite has been learning the rules and some tricks of the trade of the Guardians, not that he intends on following any of them. I'm still trying to understand the characters. Forgive me if they don't sound like themselves.))**

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"Jack, do an old man favor," North beckoned the frost sprite over with a large hand, calling him away from the window he had been staring out of. Not that North had noticed his longing to be on the other side of the glass. Of all the things he could do, move through solid objects was not one of them and that was one of those times he wish he could. He approached the workbench, leaning over the man's shoulder to see what he needed him for. There was another project being constructed on the workbench, the ice painstakingly chipped away to reveal a toy prototype in the making. "The ice is beginning to melt."

The corner of Jack's mouth lifted slightly and he extended the tip of his staff to tap it and refreeze the sculpture but the older man grasped the stick, stilling the teen's movement. He raised his eyebrows, puzzled at the Guardian and let it show, staring at him while North shook his head. "Not with staff, boy. Your fingers more than capable for job." The man said, releasing the staff and waving to the ice, folding his arms together. Jack continued to eye the man, befuddled by his refusal of the staff but shrugged it off and tapped it smartly with his knuckle. The crack that had formed in the melting ice sealing up from his chilled touch. "Ha!" North clapped him on the back so hard he pitched forward, nearly falling headfirst into the edge of the workbench until he caught himself with a hand braced against its surface. "Good job!"

"Th-A-nks," he coughed, trying to regain his breath after North practically knocked the wind out of him. He leaned on his staff, recovering from the force of the blow. "So, North, how long before I can get out of here?" he asked, thinking he might have wanted to ask a little more carefully but Jack was not one to sugar coat his words for the Guardians. North paused from inspecting the refrozen ice and peered at him with one thick eyebrow arched. Jack held up a hand, "Don't get me wrong, checking out this place is a blast and all but I've been here since we made it all, 'official' that I was a Guardian." He spread his fingers with a little jazzy wave at the word 'official' before returning his hands of the staff and hanging on it impatiently. "I'm starting to get antsy cooped up in here all day and night."

North stroked his beard as Jack spoke, closing his eyes and giving a slow nod the longer he listened. Eventually his eyes popped back open and he chuckled, bracing his hands on his hips. "You've been good boy since I brought you here, Jack." He grinned, "I think you've earned break." The elder guardian shrugged, turning back to his workbench and using a chisel along with a medium-sized hammer to chip off a large portion of the ice after deciding he didn't want the toy to have an extra arm after all. "Try not to cause too much trouble once back in the world, yes?"

"You got it." Jack gave a casual two-fingered salute at the man. It was hard not to practically vibrate with the excitement of getting out of the workshop and out into the world again. Pulling his hood up with a tug, Jack left North to his work, turning away to hide the more mischievous grin that spread across his face as he left the room. Not two seconds out of the door he nearly walked right into a Yeti and had to stagger around him, bracing his staff over his shoulder while he stepped over elves and sidled past tables and benches filled with more toys than ever. It was only spring and yet North's headquarters was as busy as ever. The Yeti's shouted back and forth at one another over the noise and Jack eventually flipped his staff over, stepping one foot into the crook of it and lifting off, hovering above the workers and sticking a hand into the pouch of his hooded sweater. Dangling one foot, he kicked side to side, lowering onto the globe and landing on the state of Maine, he walked down the East Coast with one foot in front of the other, pausing as he noticed the familiar light of Jamie still glowing brightly in the Mid East. One month away out of three hundred years was only a smidge of time spent away from home but he missed the familiar town of Burgess.

Swinging the staff upright into his other hand, he sprung off of the globe with a showy flip before darting down the passageway North used to get to the sleigh. Yetis gurgled and grunted, scrambling out of his way while he pelted thorough, smirking to himself as he called up a cold rush of air to follow in his wake but it hardly phased the thick-furred creatures. He darted past the doors containing North's main source of transportation, corkscrewing down the icy tunnel. Unable to contain his sheer pleasure at the feeling of flying freely again, his laughter bubbled out of his mouth, echoing off of the glistening walls of the tunnel. Jack dodged icicles and slid along the smooth walls to gain momentum until he pelted out of the mouth of the cavern, free to the open air. The North Wind greeted him eagerly, waiting for his command and he flung his arms out to it, feeling it rush past him with enough force to sting his eyes but he only laughed it off, letting the current raise him higher into the air. "Take me home!" he shouted with a glorified whoop before he was rushed off into the clouds.

The wind served as a fine escort to bring him back to Burgess, the town he was born in, as memory served correctly. He did an excited jig in the air, giddy with the fact he could still remember his past. He dropped free of the wind, leaning head first into the pull of gravity and let him draw him down to the earth. Jack didn't halt his descent until he nearly struck a tree branch. Exclaiming in surprise at his thrown off depth perception, he laughed it off as a goof up and corrected his height, dipping slightly into the familiar clearing where his pond greeted him. Unfortunately, however, spring had robbed the pond of ice and the sprite could see the waters rippling in the aftermath of the North Wind's gust through the trees, bidding him goodbye as it passed through to return back where it was needed.

It was too soon to come back here. Ascending higher into the air, he eyed the town, smiling at it fondly. He owed it a lot for bringing him to this point and there was one person he owed even more. He crossed his arms, drumming his fingers over a sleeve as he debated over the concept of maybe breaking a few rules if he did what he was thinking about. Grinning, lowered his arms to his sides, hitching the staff further up into his hand. "Alright, one quick visit." He barely finished telling himself this before he was leaning forward and flying off into town, sticking his staff beneath him, he braced his feet upon it and rode it like a surfer along the sidewalks. Like he had in the tunnels, Jack slicked through the warm spring afternoon with a breath of cold wind in his wake that made the adults tremble form the chill it sent down their spines.

A few children coming home from school spotted him and ran after him, nearly knocking over an adult in their scramble to keep up. "Jack Frost!" a girl panted in a steady chant while running to keep up.

"Hey Kids!" he slowed his ride down and swooped around to hover beside them as they staggered toa hault, gasping for air from their effort to keep up with him. dropping onto the sidewalk, Jack stood in front of them, leaning his staff over his shoulder. "Any of you guys know where I can find Jamie?"

"He's riding the bus—can you make it snow real quick?" one of the children asked eagerly.

"Yeah, lots of snow!"

Chattering flared up as the excitable little creatures jumped up and down, eager for him to do as they wished and the sprite held out his hands, trying to calm them down. "Whoah, whoah, hang on. It's springtime you know. I can't make it last for very long."

The kids groaned, pouting. Jack snickered, forming a snowball in his hand behind his back. Bringing it out from behind his back, he blew on it before pelting it skyward and the ball burst into millions of snowflakes, clouds forming overhead as the snow began to fall over the town. Cheers erupted form the children and Jack's cheeks burned from the wideness of the grin stretching his cheeks painfully. It was entirely different when people could see you and appreciate what you do. He basked in the joy a few seconds longer, stepping up onto a fire hydrant and pointing up to falling snow. "It's not going to last long so have at it!" to emphasize this, he created another snowball and tossed it up, hitting it with his staff so that it flew right into the back of a child's head. In seconds the children were scraping up snow from the thin coating it already created on the earth around them and Jack flew off again before he would be drafted into it. He had someone he owed a visit to.

Burgess was not a town so big it had multiple busses to worry about. There were only three of them the last he knew and he eventually found the one bearing Jamie on it after checking out the other ones in quick fly-bys. Following the yellow-orange eyesore, he flew alongside it, blowing frost over the windows and hovering along the window where Jamie sat inside. With his index finger, Jack drew a snowflake on the glass and in seconds the boy was pulling the top window down, bright-eyed and bouncing on his bench seat. "Jack! You're back!"

"You didn't think I wouldn't come back to visit now, did you?" he scoffed, matching the bus's pace as it slowed down to let a kid off. He was other windows drop down and a few curious eyes stared out at him while Jamie eagerly pointed at him. "It's Jack Frost!" he insisted, his words a little hindered by the obvious gap still in his teeth, left over from his sledding incident, courtesy of Jack himself. Realization filled their eyes as they put a name to the face they were now seeing and smiles broke out. One of the children inside poked their head out, eyes darting everywhere as they jutted an arm out and pointed at the sky.

"It's snowing!"

Jamie's attention went to the snow in the distance and his eyes landed on Jack again. "Did you really make it snow again?"

"Only a little." He shrugged his shoulders. "Can't have Easter Bunny lecturing me over messing with his favorite season now, could I?"

Jamie giggled, he knew what he was talking about when it came to not wanting to make the famous Easter Bunny angry. The bus started to move again while other kids tried to clutter the seats around Jamie to get a better look at the myth they never believed in before this spring. Some of them were in awe, others were scrutinizing him with narrowed eyes that he felt a twinge of nerves from by the strength of their stare. Jamie struggled to keep his spot at the window while others crowded his seat, the number of bodies pushing into him flattening him against the window while Jack could hear the driver calling back at them to go back to their seats. Some of them went back, others continued to linger.

"I only wanted to drop in and say hi, Kiddo." He reached in and ruffled the boy's hair. "I've been cooped up at North's place until now and I need to find out where winter's run off to."

Jamie shivered from the cold touch of Jack's hand when his chilly fingertips grazed his scalp for the briefest moment. He maintained a grin but the sprite could feel the tremor in him, causing the teen to pull his hand away and bury it back into his pocket. Jamie grasped the edge of the window, thrusting his face out, "We'll see you in the winter, right?" The hope in his voice touched the Guardian and he nodded with a soft smile.

"Later, Jamie." He held the staff out and hooked it on a streetlamp, swinging himself about and watching the bus drive onward without him. Jamie hung his arm out of the window, waving him off, the arms of other children jutting through and copying his actions, much to Jack's surprise. He waved a little, feeling awkward from all the eyed trying to watch him until the bus rounded the corner, cutting him loose of their gaze. Clearing his throat in an attempt to shake himself out of the warm fuzzies the children had brought on him, he braced a foot on the post, hearing the frost crackle over the wood.

He kicked off of the lamppost, spinning in a tight twirl up into the air again, flinging his arms out to stop himself from his corkscrew. Sitting on his staff, he kicked his leg out and shot back in the direction of the pond, his home for hundreds of years that had unwittingly also been where he was raised from birth till his death. Being in the place where you died was a peculiar sensation but three hundred years had taught him to call it home, he couldn't just avoid it now that he remembered what it did to him.

Lowering himself down, he stepped onto the liquid's surface, the waters freezing at the touch of his toes and spreading the more his foot contacted the pond. He stood on a patch of ice, tapping the staff on top of it to test its thickness and frowned when a piece broke off. He repaired it with a quick jab of the staff, turning about and walking along the water, freezing it as he went. Spring really had arrived here, not one trace of snow remained and the frost sprite could smell the age of the season all around him. The trees were lime green with budding leaves, flowers were peeking up from living grass, clover was growing in large patches on the shoreline of the pond. Season was everywhere!

He sighed, looking down at the liquid still rippling around his ice path and struck it with his staff, the splash frozen into an abstract ice sculpture while tiny droplets of water dropped onto his ice patch with tiny clicking sounds. He crouched down, picking up an ice bead and rolling it between his fingers. If he tried this when he was alive, the ice would have melted from his body heat. Not so now. He flicked the bead into the water, lifting off of the pond and alighting the tree branches overhead. His cold touch froze the buds on the branches where he walked along the length of the branch and he frowned down at them. If he wasn't careful, he was going to kill off the leaves before they even had a chance to grow. Lifting his feet back up, the ice melted away. Giving up on the idea of staying home, Jack sighed, bemoaning his newfound concern for the swing of the seasons staying in order. Burgess would just have to wait for him to come back closer to late fall when Bunny couldn't complain about him killing off the plant life because it was already dead for the year.

For now, he could at least rest in the open air for the night.

"Come along, Jack! You cannot have fun all of the time!"

Jack jerked about, searching for the source of the familiar voice that cried out at him but there was nothing there on the shoreline of the pond. Gripping his staff in his fingers, he approached the rocks looming over one edge of the water, peeking at the opening he used to nap in over the centuries in the late hours of the night and early morning before children came and invaded it, creating a fort out of his little sanctuary. Staying close to the hollow, he perched on a narrow strip of rock jutting out along the surface of the rough wall, bracing a foot on the edge while dangling the other free in the air. He surveyed the shore of the pond one more time but the familiar woman's voice did not come again. In a way, Jack didn't want it to.

Clutching his staff tighter, the wood glowed with his frost from the sharp flow of his magic that flared up within it in a rush of emotion. Noticing the glow peering through the cracks in the bark, he relaxed his grip and it dulled back into nothing again. Setting it to lean beside him, Jack freed his hands, the frost fading from the wood in the warm spring air while the sprite turned his attention on the horizon. Afternoon was turning to evening fast, the last few extra hours of dusk before surrendering to the sun for the summer. The sky was already starting to dim and he knew that the Man in the Moon would be crawling up over the trees in due time.

He let his eyes stray down to the pond, his icy touch had melted away again, leaving the waters liquid and sporting a few returned geese that glided over its surface with quiet, short honks. Canadian Geese with dark feathered heads and glossy beaks. They ruffled their feathers, Jack chortling as he realized his ice might have made the water a little colder than they expected. Tilting his head back, he touched it against the rocks, blinking up at the budding trees. It was only a matter of time before everything would be like it was on his first cold night as Jack Frost.

Closing his eyes, he remembered hearing his mother's voice again, her calling out to him to come down from the tree he had been climbing in with a note of panic in her voice when he nearly slipped. His sister had found his antics funny, she giggled and the village children always liked to follow him when it came to games. It was a good batch of memories he had regained and he relished them, shutting his eyes and letting himself drift back into them, the low honks of the geese seeming to be evenly timed, almost like they were counting him back, back to the past.


End file.
